


The Wolf and the Boy

by Fallowsthorn



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallowsthorn/pseuds/Fallowsthorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a wolf once.  And a dying boy.  And the wolf loved the boy so much that he promised in their next life they would always be together.</p>
<p>Arthur just wants to keep his promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf and the Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on the Inception Kink Meme: http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/4946.html?thread=6556498#t6556498.

Would you like to hear a story, child? No? Well, that's too bad; I'm going to tell you anyway. Now shut up and listen.

Once upon a time – what? No, I don't know why stories always start that way. It's tradition. Hush. Once upon a time, when beasts could speak, and the air could sing, and the seas could capture a man's heart, there lived a boy. His name? No, that's not important, and anyway, it's been lost in time. Enough to know that he was there, never mind what they called him.

Now, the boy's mother was very sick, sick enough that she couldn't do much more than speak at times. She knew she was going to die soon, and she wanted to see the beautiful flowers of spring again before she did. So she asked the boy to go into their backyard and gather some flowers. "But," she warned him, "don't go beyond the gate, understand? There are wolves that might eat you up!"

The boy nodded obediently and left to go gather flowers. True to his word, he didn't go out beyond the gate, but he could see the glint of eyes within the dark forest and hear a voice softly calling his name.

The next day, the flowers the boy had picked had wilted, and his mother asked him to pick new ones. "But," she warned him again, "don't go beyond the gate, understand? There are wolves out there!"

The boy nodded obediently and left to go pick flowers. But this time, he was a little braver and ventured closer to the gate than before. And he saw that the glinting eyes had merely been pools of sunlight, and his whispered name simply the breath of the wind. But as he turned to go back to the house, he also heard a wolf's padding footsteps, and his name, again, but with a growl to it that no wind could imitate.

But he trusted his mother's judgment, and he knew that he would be safe if he stayed inside the gate.

The next day, the flowers the boy had picked had wilted, and because his mother loved those flowers, and he loved his mother, he went out to pick new ones, heeding her warning yet again not to go beyond the gate.

But she had said nothing about leaning on the gate and gazing into the forest beyond, and so that was exactly what the boy did. "Wolf," he called softly. "Are you there?"

And a huge wolf appeared out of the trees, as if he had always been there and was simply now allowing himself to be seen. He walked up to the boy, slowly, cautiously. "Boy," he said in his gravelly voice. "Why are you not afraid?" For even the strongest man should have been. This wolf was the size of a pony, with the muscles and teeth to match. He would have no trouble leaping over that gate and devouring the boy if he so chose.

But the boy did not know that. "Because my mother said that if I stayed on this side of the gate, I would be safe," he told the wolf.

The wolf smiled in his own way, a quick flash of teeth. He prepared to leap over the gate and simply eat his snack when the boy said something that gave him pause.

"And you are beautiful," the boy said.

The wolf cocked his head to the side.  _Beautiful?_ There had been many words applied to him in the past. Monster, fearsome, beast, abomination, terror, killer, bloodthirsty, brute. But never  _beautiful._

"Beauty can kill," said the wolf. "Destruction can be beautiful, too. Have you ever seen a forest fire? Have you ever felt the vitality of the hunt, of ending another being's life?"

"No," said the boy. "But you are beautiful because you have."

And then he turned and went back inside, leaving a dumbfounded wolf behind.

The next day, the boy did not check if the flowers were wilted, and while he listened to his mother warn him of the gate and the forest and the wolves, he was careful not to explicitly agree.

Now, he walked right up to the gate, and sat on the thick stone wall in was attached to, making sure his legs did not dangle over the edge. When he looked up, the wolf stood in front of him, his face level with the boy's.

"If I stepped down, on the other side of the gate," the boy said, "would you hurt me?"

"Hello to you, too," the wolf said, a note of humor injected into his otherwise stony voice. "I'm fine, thanks."

"Would you?" the boy insisted.

The wolf stopped. And thought. And opened his mouth to say  _yes._ And he was as surprised as the boy when what came out of his mouth was, "No." And he paced back to give the boy space to come down.

The boy unfolded his legs and gingerly stepped onto the unkempt grass and moss. The wolf paced around him, and the boy reached a hand out and touched the wolf's flank.

The wolf grinned again, that quick flash of teeth. "Run with me."

And the boy did.

* * *

What? No, of course the story doesn't end there. What about the boy's mother? What about the boy and the wolf themselves? They cannot go on running forever, can they? Now sit still, and I'll tell you what happened after the happy ending.

* * *

The boy and the wolf became fast friends, and soon they grew to love each other. The boy got older, but the wolf stayed the same, and soon the boy could keep up with the wolf under his own power as they ran.

And then one day the wolf did not know the boy was there. And the boy saw him hunt a young fawn, and clamp his fangs around its neck until the grass was painted red with its blood and its legs had stopped churning the air.

Then the wolf saw the boy, frozen at the edge of the clearing, and he was ashamed. Not of hunting, child, that would be stupid. The wolf had to hunt to stay alive, and both he and the boy knew it. But the wolf was ashamed that the boy had seen him as the others did, and that he had destroyed a part of that innocence. He lay down in a clean part of the grass and began to eat, and waited to see what the boy would do.

He kept his eyes on the ground, but after a pause he felt a hand on his back and a body against his flank, and he knew that the boy would not leave.

The boy's mother's health waxed and waned, and it was not three years later that her poor body finally gave out and she died.

The wolf was there for the boy, and so were plenty of people, but the wolf was the only one that let the boy's tears soak into his fur and held him until he exhausted himself and slept.

And then, one day, the men came for the boy. Why? Because he was just still a boy. Boys cannot live on their own. They need someone to look after them. And he had no parents, so they came to take him to the orphanage in the center of town, where there were no forests or flowers or wolves. So the men came for the boy, but they could not find him. The boy had not known they were coming, and so he was not there. He was with the one he loved, in the woods and the wilds that only they knew.

So the men thought the boy must have been mad with grief, and run into the woods to hide. They took weapons and torches and big, heavy boots and the marched into the woods to find the boy and save him, they thought, from the wolves.

The boy did not know any of this. He was playing with the wolf near his den, and they had decided that the boy would stay with the wolf, and not go back to the village, and they could grow old together. It was a romantic plan, and it never would have worked. Why? You ask that an awful lot. But you'll see why, I promise.

The men found the boy and the wolf. It was not hard. They were not trying to hide. But when the men found them, they did not see the boy's smile, did not notice the way hands lingered on paws and fur, or the way the wolf carefully kept his weight off the boy and answered with a smile of his own. No, the men saw what they wanted to see, and so what they saw was a feral beast crouching over an innocent child, fangs bared and preparing to kill.

The men did what anyone would do. They pointed it out to the best shooter of them all, and waited until he got a clear shot. The boy saw the archer, but it was too late to shout, to late to do anything but try to protect his wolf. He pulled himself up, shoving the wolf down at the same time, and took the arrow meant for the wolf right in his heart.

The wolf's own heart broke, shattered into a million pieces with the sound like the  _thunk_ of an arrow, and he promised the boy, in the boy's last breath, that he would do whatever it took to bring them to together in their next life. And they would stay that way, he promised. Forever.

But the men did not hear the promise. They heard only whines and howls, and nothing of the language of the wolf. Why? Oh, child, because they had forgotten the words, don't you see? And they shot the wolf in anger and revenge that one of their own had died in his stead, and so it was that the wolf and the boy died in the same breath and with the same promise.

* * *

What? No, that's not the end, either. You're young. You deserve the true happy ending.

* * *

One day, a long time ago, or from then, or right now, a man named Cobb met a man called Arthur. They were working together, and they were the best in the business. And the man named Cobb didn't know why, and he never asked the man called Arthur. But they formed two halves of a well-oiled machine, streamlined, and they almost instinctively knew what the other would do.

And after they had been together for years, something slotted into place, like a half-remembered dream. The man named Cobb straightened up suddenly and regarded the man called Arthur.

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Only the last eleven years and a million or so jobs." The man called Arthur was very sarcastic. He hadn't gotten much sleep.

"No, no, somewhere else. Before that."

"Well, I don't know. Deja vu?" The man called Arthur smiled in his own way, a quick flash of teeth, and the final piece of the puzzle snapped into place in Cobb's head.

"...Wolf?"

The man called Arthur froze, hoping against hope, and the man named Cobb could see that he had always known, since the day they had met, but had said nothing and kept his promise all the same. "Boy..."

"Run with me."

And, two men and the wolf and the boy, they did.

* * *

A moral? You want a moral? It's not that kind of story, child. There are two kinds. Well, more than that, but only two are relevant here. The first kind is one with a moral. That's the made-up kind, the kind with an evil witch and nosy children that falls apart when you squint at it. Then there's this kind, no moral but watertight, because this kind is true. True enough to tell, true enough to ask for, true enough to make the air sing because it has remembered the words.

But maybe there is a moral after all. Keep your promises? Take a risk? Disobey your parents on the word of a stranger? No, you're right, none of those  _are_ very good morals, not for a story like this one. How about this one: sometimes...

Sometimes, everybody lives.

You'll understand when you're older.


End file.
